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Naming Standard

Why this chapter matters

Names let a civilization recognise a thing across time, but they do not grant the thing authority. This standard makes identifiers stable, pronounceable, traceable, and corrigible while preserving history when a name must change.

Continue to the Symbols and Marks Standard to see how visual language carries meaning without impersonating approval.

Purpose

This standard governs stable, respectful, and reviewable names for public documents, roles, places, symbols, and institutions. A name identifies or distinguishes; it does not confer ownership, authority, personhood, consent, or access.

Normative clauses

  • CANON2-R001: A governed name SHALL identify its subject, scope, owner, source, status, spelling, and review condition.
  • CANON2-R002: Naming SHALL preserve dignity, avoid deceptive impersonation, and distinguish public identity from private identity and operational credentials.
  • CANON2-R003: Stable identifiers SHALL remain immutable unless an authorised migration records the predecessor, reason, affected references, and historical continuity.
  • CANON2-R004: A name SHALL not imply authority, consent, ownership, endorsement, or legal status that its source does not establish.
  • CANON2-R005: Names that could expose a private person, protected location, sensitive capability, or unapproved future scenario SHALL be minimised or withheld.
  • CANON2-R006: Disputed, reclaimed, translated, abbreviated, and obsolete names SHALL retain their context and status rather than being silently conflated.
  • CANON2-R007: Name review SHALL identify pronunciation, representation, alternatives, affected communities, collision risk, translation limits, and correction route.
  • CANON2-R008: A name change SHALL preserve predecessor, reason, effective time, affected references, dissent, and historical continuity.
  • CANON2-R009: Naming SHALL NOT create ownership, consent, legal status, access, or private identity disclosure.

Method and boundaries

Name proposals should record pronunciation or representation where relevant, alternatives considered, affected communities, collision checks, translation limits, and a correction path. A public label may be culturally meaningful without being normative. This Draft creates no naming authority, does not approve private identity disclosure, and authorises no live renaming or external registration.

Failure handling

Impersonation, erasure, forced renaming, collision with a protected identity, authority laundering, euphemistic dehumanisation, and unexplained identifier churn require pause and independent review. Technical control of a registry or interface does not establish the right to rename its subjects.

Operating model and interpretation cases

Naming review compares subject, purpose, source, scope, identity and privacy risk, collision, affected communities, translation, predecessor mapping, correction, and authority. A meaningful label may remain cultural or provisional. Stable identifiers support continuity while preserving the history of correction and dispute.

  • Conforming: Subject, source, scope, status, collision, affected communities, correction, and authority are explicit.
  • Prohibited: A name implies ownership, consent, authority, or legal status without source.
  • Boundary: A disputed or translated name retains context and uncertainty.
  • Failure: Collision or forced renaming pauses publication and triggers review.
  • Loophole: Identifier churn erases predecessor history or hides a private clue.
  • Misuse: Names expose private people, locations, capabilities, or credentials.
  • Care-control: Naming supports dignity and recognition without controlling identity.

Design evidence

Naming review should reconcile subject, purpose, source, scope, identity and privacy risk, collision checks, affected communities, translation, predecessor mapping, correction path, and authority. A label cannot create ownership, consent, legal status, or access.